U.S. LOSES HIGH TECH ADVANTAGE ON GROUND

WASHINGTON -- If the Mideast war moves to the ground, military analysts say the U.S.-led multinational force will not enjoy the overwhelming advantages in technology it has had so far in air combat.

Some weapons experts also say that a ground war would rely on three new U.S. weapons systems -- the M1A1 tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the low-flying Apache combat helicopter -- which performed poorly in non-combat testing.

Their failures in combat could endanger the lives of thousands of troops from the United States and other nations.

U.S. military officials say, however, that the superior training of U.S. personnel would give the multinational force a sizable advantage over Iraq in a ground war.

The officials say that even if Iraq had the air sophistication of the multinational force, its military would still be losing.

"We've got skilled people using highly sophisticated weapons," said retired Army Col. Trevor Dupuy, a highly regarded warfare historian. "If you had those weapons in the hands of the Iraqis, the results (of the war so far) would be almost the same."

"Our people are more disciplined, better trained, more flexible," Dupuy said.

Military officials involved in the planning and execution of Desert Storm agreed with Dupuy's assessment on Friday.

Navy Rear Adm. John McConnell, director of intelligence operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon that Iraq's air-defense system "is similar to Western standards by design."

"However, execution has not been as sophisticated as we would expect by Western standards," McConnell said.

That lack of execution may have contributed to the failure, or inability, of Iraqi troops to fight back when first attacked on Thursday, some defense specialists said on Friday,

If Iraqi President Saddam Hussein misjudged the U.S. resolve to fight, he also may have vastly underestimated the technological superiority of his adversaries, military officials said.

"I think, quite frankly, the Iraqis had no concept of what they were getting involved with when they took on the forces of the coalition," Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. commander of the multinational force in Saudi Arabia, said Friday morning in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

The Air Force released film from Thursday's combat showing F-111 and F- 117A Stealth bombers sending 2,000-pound bombs in the doors of bunkers and down the air shafts of Iraqi defense command centers from two miles away.

"The revolution in precision-guided weaponry has taken place in air combat systems. We lose our technological advantage on the ground," said Greg Grant, military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private think tank staffed by former top government and defense officials.

"A ground war is not fought in that clinical, sterile manner that the American people have witnessed today," said Grant, referring to the footage of bombing.

Greg Williams of the Project on Government Procurement, a Pentagon watchdog group, said questions of reliability and performance haunt the Army's premier land-warfare weapons systems.

For instance, the M1A1 tank, built at a cost of $4.4 million each, sustained breakdowns every 150 miles during testing and required 1 1/2 hours of maintenance for every hour in operation. The tank also consumes nine gallons of diesel fuel a mile.

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the new combat armored personnel carrier built at a cost of $1.1 million each, was judged to be more vulnerable to anti-tank weaponry than expected.

Last year, a congressional report determined that the missile-equipped Apache combat helicopter, costing about $12 million each, was prone to breakdowns.

But retired Army Gen. Frederick Kroezen, commander of the U.S. Army in Europe during the early 1980s, said these problems were "overblown" by opponents of the weapons systems and have since been corrected.

Kroezen said ground forces, aided by a continuing air war, will have the technological advantages of night vision equipment, used by U.S. pilots, that the Iraqi troops do not have.

Joint Chiefs of Staff official Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly said the Apache helicopter had performed "stunningly well" in the air war so far. But he would not provide any details of how it has been used.